During later Roman times the worship of God had been introduced into Britain, and the discovery of the Roman bronze brooch figured on page 38 shows that Christianity had reached the shores of the Humber.

But the invaders who were to give a new name to the country and to become our ancestors were heathens, and chief among their gods was Woden. We of the twentieth century still preserve, the names of Wōden, Tīw, the god of war, and Frīg, the wife of Wōden, in our ‘Wednesday,’ ‘Tuesday,’ and ‘Friday’—the Wodenesdaeg, Tiwesdaeg, and Frigedaeg^[9] of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors.

In the passage from Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People which was partly translated in the last chapter, we are given an insight into the way in which the heathen Angles and Saxons despoiled the worshipping-places of the Christian Britons:—

Everywhere priests were slain and murdered by the side of the altars. Bishops together with their people were slain without mercy by fire and sword, and there was none to give the rites of burial to those who were so cruelly murdered.

Thus Britain became again a country entirely pagan, and it was not until the closing years of the sixth century that Christian missionaries from Rome once more set foot in it.

To understand the events leading up to the arrival of these missionaries, we must bear in mind that among the Angles and the Saxons slavery was a common custom. Social ranks of life were very marked, and all men belonged to one of three distinct classes. He who could trace back his descent from the gods ranked as an eorl,^[10] or man of noble birth, and all others were divided into two classes—the free and the unfree. A free man, who had the privilege of owning land by virtue of his freedom, was known as a ceorl^[10]; but he who was, body and soul, the property of another was called a theow,^[10] or slave.

Slaves must have been very numerous in our country during Saxon days; for wars were constantly being waged between the different tribes, and prisoners of war naturally became the slaves of their captors. So also, a man who had fallen into debt and who could not release himself became the theow of the man to whom he owed money; and when he became a slave, his wife and children became slaves likewise, and could be sold by his master. Worst of all, a free man had the right to sell his own children into slavery until they reached the age of seven.

Now it so happened that this horrible custom of selling children as slaves was the direct cause of Christianity’s being re-introduced into our country. A regular export trade in English children was carried on, and about the year 580 there were one day standing exposed for sale in the market of Rome some boys of fair complexion and beautiful hair. Along the market chanced to pass a monk, who was struck with their light-coloured hair and blue eyes, so different from the dark hair and brown eyes of the South European peoples. On his asking the slave-dealer from what country they had been brought, he was told that they came from Britain, and that the people of that island had fair complexions. Unsatisfied with this information, he asked of what race they were, and was told that they were Angli.

‘Non Angli, sed Angeli,’ replied the monk. ‘For their look is angelical, and it is meet that they should become joint heirs with the angels in heaven.’

Then he sought further information concerning them.

‘What do you call the province from which the boys were brought hither?’

‘Deira,’ was the reply given him.

‘Deira!’ said the monk; ‘that is well said. De ira eruti—they shall be snatched from the wrath of God!’

Again he asked: ‘What is the name of their king?’

‘Their king is named Aelle.’

‘Alleluia!’ replied the monk, playing on the name of the king. ‘It is most fit that the love of God our Creator be sung in those parts.’

Fifteen years after this conversation took place in the market of Rome, the monk had become famous as Pope Gregory the First. Then, in fulfilment of the plans he had formed for rescuing the Angli from the wrath of God, he chose a monk named Augustine to make a journey to Britain with some companions. Augustine, with his small band, set out, but on reaching Gaul was so dismayed by the reports of the savage character of the people to whom he was bidden to go, that he turned back, and sought release from the task which had been imposed upon him. This Gregory refused, reminding him that ‘the more difficult the task, the greater is the reward.’

Augustine once more set out, and landed at Ebbsfleet, in the Isle of Thanet, in the Spring of the year 597. The king of Kent was then Aethelberht, who had married a Christian princess, the daughter of the king of the Franks. Thus the way had been made clear for the mission of Augustine, and Kent soon became a Christian kingdom.

King Aelle of Northumbria died in 588, and thirteen years later his son Edwin became king. Edwin had married the daughter of Aethelberht of Kent, Aethelburga by name, and with her there came to Eoferwic Paulinus, a monk.

For long this monk was unable to persuade Edwin to become a Christian; but in 626 there was called a meeting of the king’s Witan, or ‘wise men,’ each of whom was asked what he thought of the new doctrines then being preached by Paulinus.^[11] After Coifi,^[12] the king’s high priest, had expressed his opinion that the gods they worshipped had no power, one of the king’s counsellors broke in with these words:—

‘Thus it seems to me, O my king, that the life of man on earth, in comparison with the life unknown to us, is just as if you were sitting at table with your ealdormen and thegns in wintertide—when the fire was kindled and your hall made warm, while it rained and snowed outside—and there came a sparrow and quickly flew through the hall, coming in by one door and passing out by the other. During the time that he is passing through the hall he is safe from the winter’s storm, but it is only for the twinkling of an eye, and in the shortest space of time he passes from winter into winter.

‘So seems the life of man—it is ours for a little while, but what goes before it and what follows after we know not. Therefore if this teaching makes anything clearer and more certain, it is meet that we follow it.’

What an apt comparison—the life of a man is like the brief flight of a sparrow through a pleasant room! Many a time must those present when the words were spoken have seen a bewildered sparrow fly swiftly through the king’s hall, entering it to seek shelter from the storm without, and leaving it to seek safety from the smoke of the fire and the noise of men’s voices within. And what more suitable illustration of man’s ignorance of the hereafter could have been chosen? We can imagine its effect upon Coifi, who, on hearing the words of the king’s counsellor, exclaimed:—

‘I see clearly that what we have been worshipping is but naught. For the more earnestly I have sought the truth through our worship, the less I have found it. Therefore, O king, I now advise that we speedily destroy and burn with fire the altars which we hallowed without receiving any benefit.’

Thus were King Edwin of Deira and his Witan converted to the true religion, and the temple which contained the heathen altars destroyed. Coifi himself sought permission to be the first to cast down the idols it contained, and the king granted him weapons and a horse for the purpose. Riding to the temple, he first cast his spear against the altar, and then called to his companions that they should pull down the idols and burn them. ‘The place is yet pointed out,’ wrote Bede one hundred years later, ‘not far east from Eoferwic beyond the river Derwent, and is to-day called Godmundingaham, where the high priest, through the inspiration of the true God, cast down and destroyed the altars which he himself had previously hallowed.’

‘Not far east from York, beyond the river Derwent’—such was Bede’s description of the place of this memorable deed. Godmundingaham, he says, was its new name, and Goodmanham it is in our own day. Tradition says further that the present church, dedicated to All Saints, stands on the exact site of the heathen temple which Coifi, the heathen high priest, was the first to profane. But whether tradition speaks true we have no means of knowing.knowing.

The immediate results of the adoption of Christianity at Goodmanham were the building of a wooden church at York, and the baptism in it of King Edwin on Easter Day 627. This wooden church, dedicated to St. Peter, was shortly afterwards succeeded by a larger and loftier church of stone, which, in its turn, was destined to be succeeded by another yet larger and loftier—the Minster that we count to-day as one of the glories of Northern England.

Six years later King Edwin was slain in battle against Penda, the heathen king of Mercia, and Cadwallon, a British king, ‘more fierce and cruel than the heathen, for he was a barbarian.’ The head of Edwin was taken to York and buried in the stone church of St. Peter which he had begun to build; and Paulinus, the first Archbishop of York, fled by sea southwards to Kent with Edwin’s widowed queen and their two children. Then for the whole of an ‘unhappy and godless’ year Northumbria was wasted by Cadwallon.

At the end of the year Edwin’s nephew Oswald, with an army small but strengthened by belief in Christ, fought against Cadwallon. Now Oswald was ‘a man dear to God,’ and before the battle he caused to be made a hastily-constructed cross of wood, which was erected in a pit dug in front of his army. With his own hands he set up this cross and held it till his men had made it firm with heaped-up soil. Then did Oswald call to him all his men and gave them his command: ‘Let us all bend the knee and together ask the almighty, living, and true God to defend us with His mercy from this proud and cruel foe; for He knows that we are justly fighting for the safety of our people.’

This they all did; and in the fight which followed, Oswald gained a complete victory, and Cadwallon was slain. The place of Oswald’s victory was called ‘Heavenfield’; and, says Bede, ‘many people to-day take chips and shavings from the wood of that holy cross and put them in water, and sprinkle the water on sick men and beasts, or give them it to drink, and they are at once cured.’

With the accession of King Oswald Christianity returned to the people of the north. This time, however, it was brought not by the monks of Rome, but by British monks from a monastery which had been established by Columba, an Irish saint, on the tiny island of Iona, lying off the west coast of Scotland.

It was to this monastery that Oswald sent asking for teachers for his people. In reply there was sent him a monk of hard and stern nature, to whom the people would not gladly listen; so that he was able to effect little, but returned to Iona and reported that he could do nothing because the people of Northumbria were unteachable. ‘Was it not, brother,’ said one of his fellow monks, ‘you who were not sufficiently patient and gentle with those untaught men?’ The question made all present turn to the speaker, and they quickly decided that he was worthy to be sent as teacher to their friend, King Oswald.

So came to Northumbria the saintly Aidan, whose success in converting the heathen Angles was due chiefly to the fact that as he taught so he himself lived. For, says Bede,

he in no way desired or sought after the things that are of this world; but all the worldly goods that were given him by kings or by rich men he gladly gave to the poor and needy who came to him. Through all the land he travelled, visiting towns and wayside villages, and never on horseback, unless there were special need, but always on foot. And wheresoever he came and whomsoever he met, whether rich or poor, he turned to them. If they were unbelievers, then he invited them to believe in Christ; if they were believers he strengthened them in their belief, and with word and deed stirred them up to almsgiving and the performance of good deeds.

By the labours of Aidan and his fellow monks the men of the north again became Christians; and such earnest Christians were they that they hallowed with the ‘Sign of the Cross’ the places at which they held their meetings for the purposes of government.

A British burial mound was often found convenient for an Anglian mōt, or meeting,—whence the name ‘Moot Hill’—and its purpose was marked by a large trench in the form of a cross cut through the mound down into the chalk. The four arms of the trench were made roughly equal, and always pointed north, south, east, and west. Cowlam Cross, near which the village church was afterwards erected, is cut seven feet deep in the solid chalk, and another similar cross with arms twenty-one feet long has been discovered at Helperthorpe.

Where no convenient mound existed, the place of meeting was sometimes marked in the opposite way. Instead of cutting a deep trench they raised at right angles two ridges of earth and stones, entirely surrounded by a shallow ditch.

Such crosses have been named Embankment Crosses, and eleven have been discovered within a radius of fifteen miles from Driffield. A favourite name for them among the country folk is that of bield, or shelter, because they were supposed to have been built up to serve as shelters for the cattle. There is one near East Heslerton, known locally as the ‘Old Bield,’ the arms of which measure 45 yards each, north and south, and 50 yards east and west. Another formerly existed near the site of the ancient village of Haywold. Ploughing operations have caused this—and probably many others—to be destroyed; but its name, ‘Christ Cross,’ is still preserved.

With the introduction of Christianity there took place great development of the arts of peace in home and village life. ‘The English forged the ploughshare rather than the sword. They built weirs, and fished, and set up watermills by the rivers. Boat-building, brewing, leather-tanning, pottery, dyeing, weaving, the working of gold and silver, and embroidery, grew and soon began to flourish. The days of merchandise succeeded the days of plunder; life became gentler, nearer in spirit to the homes of England as we now conceive them.’